Break the System
by sighttoseewasme
Summary: Here is where you live the rest of your miserable life. Here is your death sentence. Here is the place that nobody can break. Well, my name is Primrose Everdeen, and I broke out.


**Well, here is my Hunger Games AU story. It contains Everlark, Clato, Garvel, Hayffie, Fannie, Gadge, and maybe a little Prory, along with the characters Foxface (Lillawen), Thresh, Rue, President Snow, Mags, and Johanna Mason. This is in Prim's POV.**

**I got the name Lillawen from author OingoBoingoFreak.**

**Warning: This chapter talks of child abuse and plain old abuse.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games. (Or the name Lillawen.)**

I've been here for nearly a year, just counting the days. I knew I'd never get out of here. You hardly ever did. Once you were in here, you were in here for life, unless you managed to be so manipulative that you could convince anyone who came in your way, and there would be a lot of people, that you didn't belong here. And I couldn't do that.

Here did have a real name, but it was rarely used. It was most often referred to as here, and by the people who didn't inhabit it, there. Here was a prison, but not just any prison. It was the special prison, the prison that you could go to no matter what age, race, creed, gender, or anything else. It was the prison that you went to when you looked like you might be a rebel. You didn't have to commit an actual crime, in fact, the people in here hardly ever did, those people were sent to the other prisons. Not this one. But this one was far worse.

You worked hard, everyday, no matter who you were, and rarely got a day off. This was mine. You did it from the second you got in, to the day you die. If you objected, you went to the white room. The white room was, in fact, a white room. It was the room where you went to be beaten. The severity of the beating depended upon the severity of your objection. I had been to the white room only once, and I wanted to keep it that way.

I said earlier that you would most likely never get out. This was true. You weren't given a sentence other than life, and you were never offered parole. The other prisons did. It really did take someone incredibly manipulative and clever to get out. It has happened, but never in my life, or in my older sister's life. Though, my mother did talk of it happening once when she was a teenager. The boy who got out was a teenager as well. His name was Haymitch Abernathy. She also said no one had gotten out before him for over a hundred years.

Another thing that set it apart from the other prisons was the fact that the men and women were not separated. They were all shoved together. There were only two people in a cell and they could be any gender. Some were lucky, and got there own gender to share with, like myself. Some were not so lucky. Like the people in the cell next to me. It was inhabited by a girl my age named Rue and a 17ish year old boy named Cato. Those two still didn't have it as bad as some, though, because, well, they liked each other. Besides, Rue was always either talking to me or staring out a window, and Cato was always staring at a picture of him and a girl named Clove, or just sulking in a corner, so they were always to preoccupied to really bother each other.

My own cellmate was an seventy-something year old lady named Mags. Also known as Crazy Mags, because she was, well, crazy. People said she had been here since she was my age. If that's true, I understand why she's crazy. This place could do that to you. She was nice enough, though, probably not the conventional definition of crazy. She mostly just talks to herself and stares out windows and then mutters 'almost, almost.' She'd earned herself dozens of meetings in the white room, but she never seems to care. Sometimes it almost seems like she wants to go to the white room.

I thought about my one and only trip to the white room. I complained and said some not very nice things to the wrong person, and was ratted out. One trip to the white room and I knew, never complain about anything to anyone that would be willing to tell it to the wardens. Never even complain to the people who wouldn't be willing, just in case. That was only my first week here.

I was placed here when I was eleven. When my father died, we had no breadwinner for our family, because my mother basically became a turtle. When she didn't like what was happening, she kind of just retreated into her shell. She was no help when it came to food. So my older sister, Katniss, had to get the food for us. She opted for tesserae. The tesserae was an exchange. One year's supply of grain for one person, and in exchange, you would have to do some special work for the president himself. President Snow. And you couldn't say no to whatever they asked you to do, or else they'd just cut off your food supply. Of course, Katniss had to opt for three tesserae, because she had to get food for my mother and me, as well. So she had to do special work for President Snow three times. But, that was nothing. Her friend Gale had a family of five and he was always taking the tesserae for them all. So that was five special chores. And I knew people who had even bigger families, families of seven, eight, nine people, with only one person taking the tesserae.

But anyway, she was taking the tesserae for us all, and hunting in her spare time. We were doing okay, not perfect, but hey, we were alive, until the year I was to turn eleven in. Katniss opted for three tesserae, as always, but the grain that arrived was only enough for two people. And she was only asked to do special work twice. Katniss tried her hardest to convince the members of the Capitol that she had asked for three tessserae, and had only gotten two. Well, she raised such a fuss that some officials came to talk to us and look into the whole thing. The records said she had only opted for two. Katniss got angry, and a big fight started. They were convinced she was trying to get more food than she had asked for, and eventually the fight was settled by saying that 'such blasphemy would not be tolerated, and therefore you shall be taken to prison.'

And it happened. They were going to take Katniss away to prison, if it wasn't for the teary-eyed goodbye that we shared. The officials decided that they would take me instead, probably because they knew that would devastate Katniss even more than having herself thrown in jail. Katniss begged then not to, but they would not be dissuaded, and so I was taken here, and I've been here ever since.

And I knew that I'd never get out. Once your in here, your in here for life, doing the warden's bidding. It was going to be a long rest of my life.


End file.
